That’s not the funny part. The funny part is Stefanowski mocking other Republican candidates, particularly former frontrunner Mark Boughton, for using public financing. Stefanowski made lots of hay from the fact that he poured millions of his own dollars into his outsider campaign.

“This is a crucial moment for the campaign, and we just can’t afford to be off the airwaves,” wrote his wife, Amy, according to Hearst Media Connecticut. “That is why I’m personally asking you to make a donation to help us with this. Meeting this $10,000 goal means staying on the air and reaching 100,000 voters with our winning message.”

I don’t mean funny ha-ha, as you can see. I mean funny weird. Isn’t it strange that a former executive for big firms like GE and UBS is asking for nickels and dimes? The way he treated Boughton, I would have expected Stefanowski to easily find ten grand between the couch cushions.

You could say this doesn’t matter. After all, asking for money is like breathing oxygen in politics, whether you add your own cash to the kitty or not. I’d otherwise agree except for one thing: Stefanowski isn’t a normal candidate.

He’s a TV candidate.

That means he’s not willing, or able, to do what successful politicians normally do to win their party’s primary for governor. He didn’t knock on doors. He didn’t press the flesh. He didn’t court donors. He didn’t build a base of power. He didn’t, during the state GOP convention, stay up all night honing his message and horse trading with delegates. He didn’t do much, or any, of these things.

Instead, he bought ads.

Loads of ads, in fact, all purchased long before other Republican candidates started buying air time. And he bought them on TV stations beloved of Republicans, particularly Connecticut’s Fox affiliate, WTIC. While they rage-watched the latest self-made scandal coming out of the Donald Trump White House, Stefanowski delivered a message considered gospel truth among Republicans.

The income tax is the problem.

The income tax is not the problem, it has never been the problem, but it has become the problem to many Connecticut Republicans thanks to the upside-down and sealed-off logic of conservative media. (WTIC isn’t conservative media but Fox News certainly is.) If only there were a man fearless and strong enough to take out the income tax, a man who knows full well that state government must be run like a business, a man who says what needs to be said, political correctness be damned — then wages would rise, firms would come back, and growth would be explosive.

That’s pretty much Stefanowski’s message.

It’s nonsense.

To be sure, it’s been approved by Arthur Laffer himself. But Laffer’s theories are decades old. They have long been discredited. Few mainstream economists remain who take his Reaganomics seriously. The only people who believe Reaganomics works are people on TV. In this way, Stefanowski — the TV candidate — is completely at home.

None of this is to say that being the TV candidate won’t win the governor’s race. I mean, it could work. To be sure, being a TV candidate worked for President Trump.

But Stefanowski is no Trump, and Connecticut’s media is not what you find in Washington and New York. Trump was and is willing to say anything to get attention, and national media was and is willing (though less so these days) to report whatever Trump says to get attention. Correct me if I’m wrong but Stefanowski isn’t and hasn’t been going to those lengths. If he has been, it hasn’t been working, because our news media isn’t playing along.

So, unlike Trump, Stefanowski can’t rely on free media. He’ll have to buy it, a ton of it, in order to compete adequately with with Democratic candidate Ned Lamont — who really did do what successful candidates normally do to win their party’s primary for governor.

That might not be an obstacle for a millionaire buying ads left and right. Then again, perhaps Stefanowski is telling us something. Why ask for nickels and dimes when you’ve been paying millions? It could be that Stefanowski doubts he can win. Why spend the money if it’s not worth it?

John Stoehr is the publisher of the Editorial Board, a newsletter about politics. He lives in Westville.